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The Impact of Electronic Payments on Economic Growth (2016)

Resource published February 29, 2016

Greater worldwide card use raises a number of questions. Foremost, do electronic payments bring macroeconomic benefits?

From the Introduction:

Moody’s Analytics attempted to answer this question by analyzing macroeconomic data for
70 countries between 2011 and 2015. By calculating the impact of card usage on per capita
consumption, Moody’s Analytics was able to extrapolate the effect that the increase in
spending on goods and services had on consumption and thereby GDP.

Specifically, Moody’s Analytics estimated that higher card usage contributed an additional
$296 billion to consumption between 2011 and 2015, or a 0.1% cumulative increase in global
GDP during the sample time period. That equals about a $74 billion contribution to GDP
each year. Real consumption grew at an average of 2.3% in the same period, of which 0.01
percentage point is attributable to increased card penetration. This implies that card usage
accounted for about 0.4% of growth in consumption, as well as an average increase of 2.6
million jobs over 2011-2015.